by Julia C. Reischel

A diverse audience of community members, political leaders, state officials, and Tufts University students and faculty gathered April 4 to hear a panel address the Mystic River Watershed’s Superfund sites.

The goal of the event was to educate a younger generation about the events that took place in Woburn three decades ago, and also to give a wider audience an opportunity to learn more about the current state of the Wells G&H and Industriplex sites, said Forrest Graham, a Tufts student and member of Massachusetts Community Water Watch.

The Massachusetts Community Water Watch organized the panel in conjunction with Tufts’ Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and College of Citizenship and Public Service, said Zack Harlow-Nash, a Water Watch organizer at the school.

The Massachusetts Community Water Watch, which is organized on 16 of the state’s college campuses, is a project of the MASSPIRG Education Fund, the Massachusetts Service Alliance and AmeriCorps, he said.

The organization works to educate and mobilize students and community members in water related educational and restoration projects, and is now in its sixth year, he said.

Moderated by David Gute, a Tufts professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, the panel included Reverend Bruce Young, formerly of Woburn, John Durant, also a professor from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and Michael Raymond, a founding member of the Aberjona Study Coalition.

Young began the night by providing a detailed firsthand account of the events that led to the discovery of a cluster of cases of child leukemia in Woburn in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Young, who retired in 1999 from the ministry, said when he was rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Woburn, one of the members of his congregation, T and mother of one of the leukemia victims, Anne Anderson, had tried to alert the state about the high incidence of leukemia in the area, but had been ignored.

In response, Anderson and Young organized a meeting for local families dealing with childhood leukemia, and mapped out the leukemia cases with pins on a map of the neighborhood.

“When we got through it, the map told a story,” he said. “All the pins were around Anne’s house.”

Durant and Tufts graduate student Michelle Cutrofello provided a more technical analysis to complement Reverend Young’s anecdotal history.  Cutrofello and Durant are studying the impact that plumes from the Superfund sites are having on surface water in the Aberjona River watershed, part of the Mystic River watershed, Cutrofello said.

Their research showed that chemicals such as arsenic, benzene, ammonia, and chromium can be found in higher than expected doses in places as far away as the Mystic Lakes, she said.

When an audience member asked if Durant would swim at Sandy Beach in light of the contaminants he mentioned, he said that because sewage, not ammonia or arsenic, is the biggest threat to swimmers, swimming there was usually safe.

“The answer is yes, but not after a rainstorm.” 

“That comment highlights problems that also afflict Somerville,” said Harlow-Nash.

“Pollution from runoff and combined sewage overflows, both of which occur after rainstorms, make it unsafe to take a small watercraft like a canoe out on the portion of the Mystic that flows through Somerville for a couple of days after a heavy rainstorm,” he said.

The Mystic River Watershed Association is spearheading a broad effort to take unified action across town lines to cleanup a watershed that includes all or part of 21 different communities and a half million people, Harlow-Nash said.

"In Somerville, the Mystic River Watershed Association is organizing the Mystic River Super Cleanup on April 23 at the Blessing of the Bay Boathouse in Somerville,” he said.

“MyRWA is also sponsoring the 5k Herring Run Festival the following weekend in the same location.”